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Iowa Global Public Health Campus Web Conference Sites - May 2009
This video indicates the locations of Internet sites that have been connected to the University of Iowa web-conferencing (Elluminate) system between July 08 and May 09 as part of the Global Public Health Campus Initiative.
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Over the last four years, the University of Iowa has invested considerable resources in the capability to do live web-conferencing over slow and less reliable internet connections, providing interactive communications to locations that were previously thought to be unreachable. This web-conferencing capability makes the maximum educational use of whatever limited, and usually expensive, connectivity that an institution in any developing country might have.
In addition to conducting traditional lectures and meetings with multiple participants in many countries, this system can support patient consultations, including live video images and a limited set of medical information and diagnostic test results. Currently, the University of Iowa has the capacity to handle as many as 100 simultaneous connections (configured into any number of groupings) anywhere in the world where there is at least a minimally functioning internet connection.
For example, the World Health Organization’s Knowledge Management for Public Health program has been using the University of Iowa web-conferencing capabilities since they were first introduced at a seminar in Geneva in May, 2005. Since then, a globally dispersed group of Public Health professionals and institutions have conducted numerous web-conference sessions ranging from monthly presentations, which have originated from five different continents, to a three-part Global Forum on World Health Day in 2006. In total, 653 distinct Internet sites from over 60 developing countries have connected to these web-conference sessions over a recent 18-month period.
Additionally, these sessions have stimulated a number of constituent groups to begin conducting their own web-conference sessions on a regular basis. These groups include the World Federation of Public Health Associations, the World Dental Federation, the U.S. National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center, the American Public Health Association, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Afro-European Medical and Research Network, the Public Health Education Network in KwaZulu-Natal Southern Africa, and others.
In March, 2008, a University of Iowa sponsored web-conference originated from the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Kampala, Uganda. The two-hour session was attended by 15 Forum participants who engaged in discussions with others from 21 remote locations including the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, to name just a few.
Our vision is that this technologies will eventually support Health Worker Education & Resource Centers at hundreds, and then thousands, of public health and health care training institutions in under-resourced locations around the world.
University of Iowa Gloabal Campus: https://globalcampus.uiowa.edu/
Elluminate Live!: http://www.elluminate.com/